SHILLONG: The NEEPCO (North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited) has finally agreed to restore the supply of power to Meghalaya from 4:30 pm on Sunday. Initially, NEEPCO had stopped its power supply to Meghalaya from midnight after Meghalaya Energy Corporation Ltd (MECL) had failed to clear outstanding payments and failure to guarantee payment security. Meghalaya Energy Corporation Ltd (MECL) had failed to make the payment of Rs 690 crore to NEEPCO.
The salaries of MECL were also not cleared by the government. It had been pending for the last two months. A series of protests were launched by the employees of MECL for the non-receipt of salaries. They finally resorted to a 'pen down' on December 15. They had demanded the immediate release of their pending salaries. For the last few months, the Meghalaya government has been making advance payments to NEEPCO for the power supply.
However, it stopped the supply of power after the Meghalaya government had failed to make their advance payment till Friday evening. On average, Meghalaya buys about 135 MW of power from NEEPCO, Meghalaya's peak load requirement is about 500 MV of power. NEEPCO officials had claimed that the decision to restore the supply of power to Meghalaya was taken at the highest level after the of the Ministry of Power.
The Ministry of Power had told the officials of NEEPCO that people of Meghalaya might be caught in the dark amid Christmas celebration if the power supply is not restored. Meanwhile, there is a possibility of rotational load-shedding in parts of Meghalaya as one of the units of ONGCL, the Tripura Power Company had been shut down because of technical issues. (Agencies)